Reminiscences and Reflections of an Octogenarian Highlander
Chapter XXI. -
The Veto Act

FROM the first raising of the question,
all our Glen
debaters, on the strength of the knowledge they got
from their own thoughtful if limited studies, and
from the more vehement arguments put forth in the
Assembly and in Press reports and pamphlets,
unanimously agreed that patronage was not in
harmony with the theory of Presbyterian Church
organisation, that it had always been considered a
grievance, and that having been abolished imperfectly after the Revolution
of 1688, its restoration near the end of Queen Anne's reign, for a
reactionary political purpose, by English Ministers backed by a majority of
English members of Parliament, was a fraud upon Scotland; and if not in the
letter, surely enough in the spirit, a gross violation of the 1707 Act of
Union. The few "Gray Egyptians" who did not yet sleep with their fathers
were by this time too old and feeble to take a leading part in Glen
politics. But younger men imbued with their ideas in diluted form contended
that it was premature, and consequently most inexpedient, to raise such a
weighty controversy, while in the districts they knew best, patronage had
been exercised with conscientious care to select excellent presentees here
many names were mentioned and great deference
had been paid to wishes of congregations and the
cause of religion, morality, and education.

The supporters of the Veto Act frankly
admitted
that in the past the co-operation of landlords and
patrons with the Church of Scotland had been
kindly and beneficial, but they asserted that now
landlords as a class were taking up a hostile
attitude to the Church and to the native Highland
population. They alleged that at the second post-
Reform election, which had just taken place, the
Tory landlords with some honourable exceptions
had not let tenants vote as their fathers would have
done, but, by factors and other agents, had driven
them like dumb cattle to vote for Tory candidates.
They next called attention to the Breadalbane and Sutherland evictions to
show what hollow mockeries the liberal professions of Whig magnates really
were. On these great properties the big farms made by clearing out the
native inhabitants were usually let to strangers in race and language. Such
was the substance of the rejoinder; and it is worth being noted. I was so
young that it did not impress me deeply at the time, but at the Disruption I
realised that the something felt, if unmentioned, which underlay the
religious and ecclesiastical agitation in the Highlands was a seeking for
means of native race defence in. a democratically constituted national
Church, liberated from influences which were formerly friendly but were now
be- coming hostile. The seeking for defence in this direction might not have
been vain if the Highlanders themselves had not made it so by leaving
the Church of Scotland in 1843. At the time
when our Glen people were discussing patronage
and the Veto Act, anyone who prophesied the
Disruption would have been ridiculed as a fool or
morally stoned as a lying mouthpiece of Baal. At
and after the Disruption a similar fate would have
been his who prophesied the Union of the United
Free Church in 1900.

Our Glen objectors to the Veto Act wished)
as almost all Highlanders did, to see patronage
abolished in a regular way, since they had to admit
sorrowfully that there was too much cause to fear
the old harmony was nearly at an end, but they
argued that a wrong thing done by Parliament
could only be undone and righted by Parliament ;
and that the device of giving the majority of male
communicants the right of rejecting presentees was
a wretched piece of tinkering, even if it were within
the legal competence of the General Assembly to
confer such a right of rejection at all. The other
side did not denv that the Veto Act was far from
being so satisfactory as the abolition of patronage
by Act of Parliament would have been. "Why
then," asked the objectors, "do we not ask Parliament to give us abolition?" "Because," replied the
others, "there would be small chance of Parliament
soon granting us our request, when all Church of
England members, peers and commoners, would join
our Scottish Tories in resisting abolition."

This comment system requires
you to be logged in through either a Disqus account or an
account you already have with Google, Twitter, Facebook or
Yahoo. In the event you don't have an account with any of these
companies then you can create an account with Disqus. All
comments are moderated so they won't display until the moderator
has approved your comment.